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Rendition Victim Moves to Sue US
A Canadian man who was deported by US officials to Syria, where he was imprisoned and allegedly tortured, has appealed a court ruling preventing him from suing the US.
Arar was deported to Syria by US authorities where he was allegedly tortured. (Associated Press) Maher Arar filed a lawsuit before the US supreme court on Monday,
appealing a lower court ruling that rejected his case because it
involved national security information.
Arar was arrested by US authorities while transiting through New York's JFK International Airport in 2002, on his way home to Canada from a family vacation in Tunis.
He was detained on information shared by Canadian police that suggested he had ties to "terrorist" groups.
'Too sensitive'
US authorities held him in solitary confinement and interrogated him for nearly two weeks before deporting him to Syria.
He was imprisoned for a year in Damascus, the Syrian capital, during which time he says he was tortured before finally being released and returned to Canada.
A Canadian commission eventually cleared him of any connections to "terrorist" organisations and concluded that he had been tortured.
He was awarded $10.5m in compensation.
Arar's suit before the Supreme Court questions whether "federal officials who conspired with Syrian officials to subject an individual in US custody to torture in Syria may be sued for damages".
David Cole, a lawyer for Arar, said: "The courts below ruled that federal officials cannot be sued for sending an innocent man to Syria to be tortured because the case would be too sensitive."
He said: "We hope the supreme court will reaffirm the role of checks and balances and afford Mr Arar his day in court."
22 Comments so far
Show AllDon't sue, get a lobbyists. Money talks, bullshit walks. Welcome to the new USA.
Keep it up, Maher.
It's about our rights and the moderation of actions of those government officials with legal power. Your efforts will help all of us.
Good luck with that. Not just is congress bought and paid for, many of the supremes are as well.
-He said: "We hope the supreme court will reaffirm the role of checks and balances and afford Mr Arar his day in court."
This would be the same court that said Exon is a person, but people that the US government kidnaps and tortures isn't?
Good luck getting justice from a US court.
Too bad he's not the kind of Corporate 'person' (one with millions of dollars to buy politicians, judges and lobbyists) the SCOTUS just handed your collective asses over to.
Epic tragedy. I'm sure none of this was too sensitive to the one who's life was turned up fucking side down.
What a disgrace. I hope he wins everything he wants. It's happening all over the world, innocent people jailed, killed, homes destroyed, and here we sit yackyackyack
Maybe they will let John Yoo write the Courts majority decision, afterall he is Harvard educated. Oh, and a Yale Law school graduate and a teacher of Law. Are you feeling warm and fuzzy yet?
Mr. Maher deserves to win his lawsuit against the U.S. but won't, since we adopted our new national motto, "9/11 changed everything."
9/11 especially changed our "justice" system. We don't care about crimes that occurred in the PAST, since we are looking FORWARD, unless the crimes were committed by poor or powerless people, such as drug addicts and other bottom dogs. We will throw the book at them, of course, so we can enrich the prison industry, one of our few growth industries.
But if the crimes are committed by the rich and powerful, or the government, we must let bygones be bygones.
An old bumper sticker expresses our condition very well:
"Nation of Sheep. Owned by Pigs. Ruled by Wolves"
"Nation of Sheep. Owned by Pigs. Ruled by Wolves"
Wolves are much kinder and more civilized than we are. That is why they are trying to exterminate them here in the lower 48 and Alaska.
When the Canadian Government ruled Mr. Arar was not a terrorist, the DOJ said, "If he enters the United States or passes through, we will detain him as a terrorist."
I am expecting that the US will soon be in a situation like the old movie "Casablanca" where people were killing each other and prostituting themselves to obtain "exit visas," so they could get out of the country.
Your papers, please?
Fat chance. With a court dominated by right wingers, and the US Constitution having become a quaint old document, and in the face if the fearful, paranoid US population needing to feel secure at all cost, this case will be won when Dick Chaney's hell freezes over.
Of course 99% of us feel that if an innocent person is kidnapped and tortured by agents of the US government that they should be compensated. Unfortunately you only have to know that the US dept of Justice will fight this reasonable position and therefore they no longer represent justice in America. So Maher is going up against the Dept. of Injustice and as other posters have said under this warped system Maher's appeal will fall on ignorant and arrogant ears.
Canada should sever all diplomatic and trade relations with the USA.
I wish that we could.
But as long as Bush's 'Mini-me' Stephen Harper is in power, that is very unlikely. He's having too much fun shutting down democracy (proroguing Parliament) to dodge questions about how Canadian Forces are treating Afghan POWs (apparently we are handing them over to US trained and paid torturers... but who pays attention to facts like that?).
As for severing commercial and trade ties, not gonna happen. Too many of our politicians are bought and paid for by US Corporations. And too much money is being made shipping our remaining natural resources (oil, lumber, uranium, natural gas, water, etc.) south of the border.
Oh, it'll be too sensitive all right, too sensitive to the former president and his coterie of lackeys. It will show them up for what they are, imbecilic incompetents and perhaps even more, traitors. The jury hasn't been empanelled on that yet.
umm, as opposed to the current president and *his* coterie of lackeys? Except that I wouldn't call Holder an imbecile. That would just give him an out.
Arar's case is one I've followed with some interest over the years. His lawsuit may get a second hearing in light of recent events in the Siddiqui trial in New York. ICH update is here:
http://www.opednews.com/populum/linkframe.php?linkid=106211
Also, there's a plan to move the Khalid Sheikh Mohammed's trial out of New York. KSM's testimony was invoked by torture, including allegations of his children, too. This of course would taint the evidence, which is why the FBI sent "clean teams" down to Gitmo. Turns out, the torture didn't provide any info that couldn't have been derived through legal interrogation methods. It did however get KSM to admit to anything the gov't wanted, including events that he couldn't have planned.
The crotch bomber is seeking a plea--hardly hard on terrorism for the DoJ to offer pleas now is it? Maybe, like the Siddiqui trial, the gov't has something to hide. Then again, who knows. Maybe an emancipated woman might have wrestled an unsecured assault rifle from a Special Forces sergeant, which is what the prosecution claims, despite video evidence indicating bullet holes were there before the incident.
Maybe he just needs to set up as a corporation. Since corporations get everything they want from the SCOTUS, he would then receive justice.
Ta Dah !
"We hope the supreme court will reaffirm the role of checks and balances and afford Mr Arar his day in court."
Not likely since the Supreme Court has just killed the last vestige of any pretense at democracy with respect to corporations and voting.
The American administration really has become very ugly.
The US tortures it's own citizens in US prisons, they think it's normal.
This court? No way will they overturn the Bush/Cheney atrocity.